Did anybody by chance work through this book?

"Rapid Reading Japanese: Improving Reading Skills of Intermediate and Advanced Students"

http://www.amazon.co.jp/Rapid-Reading-Ja...9U5OQ9B8ZX

And yes, before everybody jumps in and says "you only need to read more native material", don't worry, every day I'm reading several articles in the 日経新聞, but even when I don't have to look up any words or grammar points it takes a long time, and I feel that I've definitely reached a plateau.

I was going to say just read more but lol. As for the plateau don't worry it has happened to me a lot, but I keep immersing,putting in the time,etc. And I seem to keep passing my previous limitations in understanding,reading. To be honest, I honestly think it comes down to putting the time, if you want to be like a native, do stuff like natives do. Read,talk,write,breeze,live the language. Obviously just going to japan won't guarantee you fluency.(Speaking, maybe but other skills nop! i think...)

If you want to improve reading, keep reading, improve speaking, keep speaking, improve writing,keep writing,etc.

Using the srs there are certain techniques that help you forge the kanji reading in your mind, like writing from kana to kanji production cards. To be honest I still got a lot of trouble reading, even though I checked how much kanji readings I know and it's 1800-1900 in 9.8 months. No where near the amount I want. basically I aim for 4000 kanji+. Sounds extreme but hey, I want to get good in this language not just go half-way.

Want to get this book...
http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%...4106102447

awesome found what I was looking for

http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/reader/410610...eader-link

Rapid Reading Japanese is a worthwhile book, but if you're already capable of reading 日経 I don't think it'll benefit you all that much. It's more for students who are still trying to progress into raw material from the more classroom/textbook/reader formatted environment.

ta12121 Wrote:Want to get this book...
http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%...4106102447

I have that book and have read about half of it. It's rather high level, but pretty interesting.

JimmySeal Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:Want to get this book...
http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%...4106102447

I have that book and have read about half of it. It's rather high level, but pretty interesting.

I can read almost all of it. I want to buy a few of those books, it's interesting.
(Well the sample pages, that provide i mean.)
Wouldn't mind buying a few of these but I fear huge shipping fees.

Irixmark, Looking at your current level you should buy books that are written by natives.


Icecream, (my favorite food :>)
2000 kanji isn't halfway! I think the first 2000 is at least ten times harder than the next 2000. :\ (Though I haven't gone all the way through RTK3 yet. )

Thanks for sharing. These seems like some good books.

Thanks a lot for all the interesting book suggestions (if not really related), and also for the flattery.

Actually my level isn't all that high when it comes to general listening comprehension---nowhere close to 1級, for example. My vocabulary is quite specialized, so I can read (most of) the econ news in 日経 and the political news in e.g. the 朝日新聞 without a dictionary by now, but not anything from the culture-related sections. I tend to forget the readings of words (unless they're in the SRS) but not the meanings, so my listening comprehension isn't quite at the same level even on topics I know fairly well. That's simply due to focusing on what I really need in my studies rather than SRSing Jdramas, unfortunately, and having limited time for immersion (can't really have Japanese radio on in the background when I'm fiddling with economic models because I can hardly focus enough as it is).

What bothers me is that my reading speed is nowhere close to native: instead of 100-200 words/minute in dense texts on political and economic issues (that's what grad school trains you to do) I'm at maybe 30-50 words/minute. Often I have to dissect the sentences because I still don't see which relative clause goes where.

Irixmark Wrote:What bothers me is that my reading speed is nowhere close to native: instead of 100-200 words/minute in dense texts on political and economic issues (that's what grad school trains you to do) I'm at maybe 30-50 words/minute. Often I have to dissect the sentences because I still don't see which relative clause goes where.

I think this is perfectly normal, and I second ta12121, you just need to read a lot. I have a data, or more like an anecdotal story, you might be interested in. My 1st language is Japanese and my 2nd is English, and I decided my English sucked and I needed to do something about it 3 and a half years ago. So I started reading papers and more mature magazines like Time and The Economist everyday. One of the articles I read when I started doing it was this one.

http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/fa...gewanted=1

I remember it took me at least 30 minutes to read this article which put me into the range of 70 words per minute or less. I had several dozen words I didn't know and I had to stop and think really hard to decipher the meanings of some of the sentences. After 3 and a half years of reading 1 to 3 hours a day, probably about 100 magazines and 20 novels worth of reading, I can now read a 1000 word article in The Economist in 10 minutes or less, at around 150 wpm. I still usually have 2 to 5 words I don't know in a 1000 word article on political or economic matters, and stumble upon an hard to understand idiomatic expression once in a while, but it rarely hinders my ability to read fluidly. In my case, pop-up dictionaries were, and still are, a great help in acquiring vocabulary.

Now, you are going the other way around, your first language seems to be English and you are learning Japanese, but it's hard to imagine one way is considerably easier or harder than the other especially when you already have a good command of Kanji. So I say, 1000 hours of reading and you'll get there. You might be able to do it in 500 hours or so if you concentrate on economic articles and try to skim a bit, but I doubt 100 or 200 hours will make a significant difference at your level, whatever you do. If you do find the trick though, please share it here, I'll be all over it.

In just over a year's time I need to be basically business proficient in Japanese for employment purposes so I'll be embarking on this same route of reading the Nikkei and whatnot each day too. I hope that year will be enough to reach the point needed (bearing in mind I don't have all day to devote to this and I need the dictionary a lot currently). I guess can manage 500-750 hours of study over that time, which should be enough for just economic matters.

How long have you had that schedule OP?

dizmox Wrote:In just over a year's time I need to be basically business proficient in Japanese for employment purposes so I'll be embarking on this same route of reading the Nikkei and whatnot each day too. (...)

How long have you had that schedule OP?

My schedule isn't really helpful because I've been studying Japanese on and off for way too many years, and didn't discover Anki until quite recently.

Here's a book that was extremely useful for me in acquiring business and economics vocabulary:

http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%...351&sr=8-3

It has Japanese and the English translation side by side, so you can check your understanding right away, and enter various terms into Anki (or whatever you're using) without looking them up.

The grammar used in the book is fairly basic compared to that in newspaper articles, but that makes it especially good because the learning curve is flatter. I didn't sentence mine the book at the time because I wasn't aware of the method, and in any case, there's not much need to learn words like 所得格差 (income gap) in context because the concepts translate 1:1 to English, unless of course the sentences help you remember the vocabulary.